


The Mystery of the Night Woman

by madame_faust



Series: The Adventures of S. Holmes and J. Watson [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Case Fic, F/F, Pre-Relationship, Rule 63, They're all lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22257301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: When Jane Watson arrives home early from a date that went spectacularly awry, she believes there's nothing more to it than the sting of disappointed expectations and a funny story to tell at parties. She and her flatmate Sherlock Holmes soon learn there might be something more sinister afoot.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: The Adventures of S. Holmes and J. Watson [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647874
Comments: 20
Kudos: 22





	1. Ghosted

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this version of Holmes and Watson in my head for a long time and finally decided to jot it all down; not Britpicked.

I'd been sharing a flat with Sherlock Holmes for six weeks before we had a proper conversation.

For the most part, we orbited around one another. I worked odd hours at the clinic, trying to cobble together the shreds of a career after a disastrous (for me) turn in Afghanistan. It was like building a life over from scratch. I expected to make a career in the RAMC, but a spray of shrapnel put an end to that. For her part...well, early in our acquaintance, I wasn't entirely sure what it was Holmes _did_ all day. She kept mostly to her bedroom, went out a great deal, and occasionally I caught a glimpse of a visitor in the sitting room when I was on my way in or out (rarely the same person twice and they never stayed long), but I didn't know that much about it. Admittedly, I wasn't seeking out my flatmate's company any more than she was mine - we both kept odd hours, both endured bouts of insomnia, and though both of us were looking for someone to go halves on a decent suite of rooms in an appallingly expensive city, neither of us was looking to make a new friend. 

My therapist recommended a regimen of social activities with the goal of resuming a "normal" career and social life. More than once I grimly reflected at my typing 'Drinks' and 'Rugger' into my mobile with the sort of dull dread I previously reserved for trips to the dentist or my physical therapist. I'd approached 'Date w/Olivia' with the same resigned sensation - what would my uni mates think of me now?

Olivia was one of those friend-of-a-friend types, 'Oh, I think you'd get on, here's her number, send her a text, what's the worst that could happen?' I was feeling more optimistic than the situation warranted, but not without cause - after all, the last time I let a friend introduce me to a girl, I'd got a fairly cheap room out of it, so I thought I might be lucky enough for lightning to strike twice. 

I wasn't and I was in the process of dragging my arse up the stairs to bed when a voice from the sitting room inquired, rather sympathetically, "Bad date, Watson?"

That was a peculiarity of hers - her insistence upon calling me 'Watson' and herself 'Holmes' like we were a pair of mid-century schoolgirls. It was one I didn't mind. I'd always hated my given name ("Jane" conjured up a picture of a tow-headed girl in pigtails and an itchy dress with a starched white collar, my parents' favourite photograph of me and one I'd always despised), and she wasn't any more fond of hers than I was. My friends, what few I had left, anyway, exclusively referred to me as 'J,' but Holmes preferred either the eccentricity or formality of surnames. I hadn't worked out which it was yet.

I had been on my way to bed had assumed the woman on the sofa who had addressed me was one of Holmes's occasional visitors. She had a wide, open face, with large, doe-eyes, a snub nose, and a pair of beautifully full lips. But the voice that came from the mouth, though full of public school plumminess, was incongruously deep, in contrast with the face. I blinked, looked again, and realized that the woman in front of me wasn't a stranger, but a cunningly made-up Sherlock Holmes. 

"That's one hell of a make-up job," I said, a bit taken aback. The face seemed to shift as I stared at it: now it was Holmes under three tonnes of foundation and contouring stick. Then, a pretty stranger. 

Holmes grinned, wide and smug, and the face was finally totally recognisable as her own. "YouTube tutorial. The goal was achieving 'Kylie Jenner Lips.' I don't know what that's in reference to, but I'm pleased with the results."

It was an impressive result, but I was left wondering just how many 'visitors' over the last few weeks had actually been strangers and not just the result of YouTube tutorials. 

Holmes took up a cleansing cloth and proceeded to wipe her face, her own features emerging: angular, a long nose, rather a high forehead, thin lips, and deep-set black eyes, neither large nor doe-like. Striking and androgynous, but not at all pretty. Amazing. I wondered if she practising make-up tutorials in preparation for a date herself and silently wished her better luck than I'd had. Though speaking of... 

"How'd you know it was a bad date?" I asked, curiously. 

"To be fair, I don't _know_ ," Holmes admitted, discarding the face cloths in the bin and putting away her impressive array of pots and paints; make-up artist? Was that how she made a living? "I surmised. It's only just gone nine, so you didn't stay out very late. You rather plodded up the stairs; not the walk of a woman flush with romance. And you haven't looked at your mobile once since you arrived, clearly not hoping for a post-date text reiterating what a wonderful time you both had and asking when she might see you again."

"Makes sense," I admitted; actually, I'd turned my mobile off just as soon as we'd said our awkward good-nights. "It started off alright, but it got weird - sorry, I won't bore you going over the details."

I was about to continue up to bed, but Holmes sat up on her haunches, leaning over the back of the sofa, a bit of a light coming into her dark eyes. "Well, ordinarily I'd agree that I'd rather you didn't wring your heart out over disappointed love, but...it was weird? How was it weird? Something mundane, like spinach in the teeth which you didn't know how to address without embarrassing her?"

"Bizarre," I admitted and I swear, the spark of light turned into a full-on _twinkle_. "It just took an odd turn. There are some things you just don't _tell_ people about on the first date. You know what I mean?"

Holmes sat down in a corner of the sofa and patted the cushion beside her in clear invitation. "I'm not sure I do, tell me about it."

She'd drawn her legs up and tucked them under her so she was taking up less space - I used to think I was fairly tall, but Holmes has ten centimetres on me and is about thirty over the national average for a woman. Nevertheless, she folded her long legs up and squeezed into a corner of the sofa with an impressive amount of flexibility. I thought that the time that she might have been a yoga enthusiast. Not being nearly so limber, I sat down opposite her and lay my right arm along the back of the sofa. Now that I was home and had a bit of time and distance, the whole sorry business was looking much funnier.

"It started off alright," I began, explaining how I met Olivia for dinner at a new Greek place - it was fairly empty, though the food was alright. We'd been chatting about the usual, lives, careers, hobbies. I might have gone on too long about the clinic, the neighbourhood it was in, how my mum was fussed about it, claiming I'd probably be murdered, (conveniently forgetting that I was nearly blown up a year ago), but she interrupted me.

"I thought she'd had enough of hearing about my relationship with my mum," I explained. "Oversharing, you know? 'Hi, how are you, are you liking the spanakopita, by the bye, my family and I don't get on,' but that wasn't it.

 _'Oh, speaking of murder,'_ she said, in this fake-casual way. _'There's something I should tell you. I've got a gift.'"_

Holmes's eyes narrowed with apparent interest, she'd placed her pointy chin on her fists and leaned toward me like she was a child being told a particularly engaging bedtime story. "Go on."

"Well, I don't really remember what I said, probably, _'Oh?'_ because what else do you say? And she went on, _'I can communicate with the dead.'_ "

Whatever Holmes had been hoping I would say, it clearly wasn't that. The light in her eyes dimmed and she sat back on the sofa, evidently disappointed. "Oh, is that all?"

"I wish it had been," I replied, sighing. "She went on for almost half an hour. Apparently she's only come into it recently, this...talking to the dead thing. I really wasn't encouraging this, just saying, _'Hmm,'_ and _'That's interesting,'_ trying to get her off it, you know? But she just wouldn't stop. She said there's the ghost of a murdered woman in her flat who sits on her bed at night and talks to her."

Holmes's eyes narrowed and her lips turned down in a contemplative frown. "How old was she?"

"Twenty-six, twenty-seven, thereabouts," I said. Holmes's expression cleared, then the frown was back, one of understanding this time and not puzzlement. I fancied I knew where her thoughts were going since mine had trod along the same track as I tried to end the conversation and signal to the waitress that we'd like the cheque. "I know, I thought the same thing."

Her dark eyebrows rose in surprise. "Thought what thing?"

"Schizophrenia," I ventured. I wasn't a psychologist and unqualified to make a diagnosis, not to mention that this was meant to be a _date_ , not an examination, but the symptoms of the disorder often manifested in adulthood in one's late twenties, the classic signs being auditory and visual hallucinations. I hoped I was wrong, for it's a notoriously difficult condition to manage and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but nothing in her conviction about her 'gift' made me want to prolong the date with a suggestion of a film or a 'Do you want to go back to your place for a bit?' 

I was briefly distracted from my remembrances by the expression on Holmes's face. Whatever disappointment she'd showed before, she seemed absolutely thrilled. She burst out with that Cheshire Cat smile again and looked at me...well, she _looked_ at me. Prior to that night, aside from an oddly intense appraisal when we first met (where she informed me that I was a medical professional, late of the RAMC, with a fondness for sport and a family I was estranged from, all of which was absolutely correct), she hardly paid me much notice around the flat. She'd glance at me now and again, occasionally grunt 'Good morning,' or 'Good evening,' but that was all. Now she looked at me with real attention. With real interest. It was a sign of what a dry spell I'd been slogging through that I found the fact of being looked at like I was interesting intensely flattering.

I cleared my throat and broke eye contact, wrapping up my story. "Anyway, she started talking about all sorts of other things. How she'd never felt close to her mother when she was a teenager, how her mother claimed to have a connection to the spiritual world, that they clearly shared the same 'gift' -"

"Schizophrenia," Holmes added in and I shrugged.

"I don't know, ah, I _surmised_ ," I said, venturing a look back into Holmes's face where I found her looking at me with the same wide smile and engaged expression as before. I ventured a brief smile back. "I could be wrong, after all, it might be something else. Or maybe there really is a ghost in her house who talks to her."

"Unlikely," Holmes replied, rolling her eyes. "I can't tell you how often I've been rung up about ghosts and poltergeists and it's just old wiring and drafts."

I laughed, surprised. "What, are you a Ghostbuster?"

"I endeavor not to be," she said, oddly serious. Then her tone lightened and she said, "So you detangled yourself from this engagement. Did you do so gracefully or is she still out there pining over you?"

I laughed again, much harder now and not a little bitterly. "I don't think she's _pining_. I'm not exactly a catch now, am I? I told her I had an early morning and wanted to turn in early, but thanks for a nice night, all the usual."

"Mmm," Holmes hummed, eyeing me closely again. I fancied I knew what she was thinking well enough. I could _surmise_ , at least. Tired old butch, with a stiff, busted up shoulder and a bad knee who hadn't quite reached thirty yet, but wasted her prime years serving her country in an unwinnable war and had nothing to show for it but scars, a pension, and a rotten attitude. Nothing to pine over in the least. "Are you going to let her down gently, then?"

I nodded, scrubbing a hand over my face. I wasn't really in the right place in my life to act as a support system to anyone. Once upon a time, sure, need a friend to wingman for you at the club who wasn't afraid to intervene if a situation got out of hand, looking for someone to join you on a spontaneous holiday to Spain and stay in a creepy hostel, or just need a sympathetic ear to wring your heart out to in the middle of the night about how your girlfriend left you and took the cats, ring me up. Good old J Watson. Only she'd gone to war and the body that had come back couldn't sleep for nightmares, lost all her taste for spontaneity, and was utterly bereft of sympathy.

"I'll text her in a day or two," I replied. "Tell her I'm busy with work. Emotionally unavailable. Which isn't a lie."

"Mmm," Holmes hummed again, an inscrutable sound that I found I didn't much like. Made me feel like she knew something about me that she was keeping to herself. Discomfited and out of sorts (how could she know anything about me when I didn't even know what she did for _work_?)

I got up, automatically rotating my shoulder as I did. Little twinge, probably from sitting too long. I could work in a spot of PT before bed, wasn't like I be getting to sleep anytime soon. 

"Well," I said, forcing a bit of false levity into my tone. "Thanks for listening to my dating woes. I'll be sure to return the favour if you ever need it."

Holmes didn't answer - not even to hum meaningfully - she just stretched her long legs out and leaned back against the arm of the sofa, closing her eyes. I supposed that meant I was dismissed. I was nearly up the stairs to my room when she spoke.

"Good-night, Watson," she said, not moving from her place on the sofa. "I hope you have a pleasant sleep."

It was more friendliness than she'd accorded me since I moved into the place. No matter what a sorry shade of my former self I'd turned out to be, I wasn't an arsehole. At least, I tried not to be.

"'Night, Holmes," I replied. "You as well."

As it turned out, my sleep was pleasant. Brief, but thankfully dreamless. I woke the next morning to the light streaming in over my face and a little more than twenty minutes to spare before I had to catch the bus for work. I sped through a shower, brushed my teeth, and dressed, only just managing to get on the bus, out of breath and red-faced from running to catch it. I hadn't remembered to turn my mobile on for the alarm and slept well through the time the alarm ought to have sounded. At least there would be coffee, and if I was very lucky, the prospect of stale bagels at the clinic from a staff meeting on Monday. 

As the phone buzzed to life, I saw I had a message - from Olivia. And not the one I'd been dreading, asking if we might see each other again. 

**Hi J, it's Liv. I'm sorry, I thought I was weirding you out with the ghost talk, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. You're the only person I've told. I wouldn't bother you, but things took a scary turn last night. Can you message me back when you get this? Please.**


	2. Smudge

I didn't text back right away, caught up between who I had been and who I was then. The old J Watson would have immediately replied with reassurances that I'd be over as soon as I could, her heart so quick to start bleeding it was amazing that she didn't leave little blood droplets all over the sidewalks. The current J Watson came up with any number of excuses to ghost - _I don't really know this girl, I'm not equipt to deal with a psychotic break right now, I've got work and I'll be worn out afterward_ \- the heart, once so heavy, must have bled itself out in Afghanistan. 

Liv texted back as I was walking into the clinic. 

**I've got work until 5. I'm just a bit scared to go home alone.**

_Haven't you got any other friends?_ I thought, but didn't actually type because I didn't want to be a dick. Though my nerves were raw and my patience thin, as I mentioned previously, I did not want 'arsehole' to be my defining personality trait. Instead I settled on, **Not sure when I'll be out** (a lie) **is there someone you can stay with?**

I was putting my lunch in the refrigerator and affixing my staff ID to my coat when she replied.

**I'll wait at a cafe. I've only told you about my experiences, I don't want my friends thinking I'm mental.**

That cleared things up quite a bit. It seemed as though she _was_ as put off by me as I was her. The fact that she wasn't reaching out to the people who truly mattered in her life meant that I didn't rank very high in her estimation, but the fact that she was reaching out anyway did mean she was genuinely frightened. 

I sent her a vague message saying I'd text her when I got off work. Then, before I put my mobile away, sent in another to Holmes, on a whim. 

**Olivia texted me this morning. Wants me to come over after work. Says something's happened with her ghost and she's too nervous to go back to her place alone.**

Not really expecting a reply, I put my phone in my bag and started my shift. I was massively overqualified to work at the surgery and the staff all knew it. Every day I came in, they all seemed surprised, as though when I left at day's end, they didn't really expect to see me back. But I'd tired of surgery after the war. I wanted something quiet, routine. Writing scripts for antibiotics and ordering blood work. The sort of work I could do in my sleep. Notwithstanding fact that I'd not really been sleeping for the past few months.

The expectation that I was on the verge of pulling stakes every day meant most of the staff paid me absolutely no notice beyond professional acknowledgement. Which was fine since I could just about muster up the energy to deal with my consultations, nevermind accepting offers to go out for drinks on a Friday night. That strategy was even endorsed by my therapist: keep the spheres separate: work, home, social life. They were easier to deal with if they were compartmentalised.

To my surprise upon my lunch break I'd found that Holmes had written back, and quickly too.

**May I come along?**

So much for separate spheres, then. I frowned down at the screen, brow furrowed. If, as I suspected, Olivia was experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations, then Holmes coming along to gawp at her would be not only unethical, but make an already delicate interaction that much more difficult. Though my suspicions of schizophrenia were starting to feel like the irresponsible armchair psychiatry that they were. Auditory and visual hallucinations were one symptom, but generally they appeared with other things. Paranoia, disorganised thinking, a whole host of other problems that would make holding down a job and maintaining a social life and just performing basic home and self care noticeably difficult, if not impossible. None of which Olivia seemed to be struggling with. And one did not just go from asymptomatic to 'I see ghosts' overnight. (I spent most of the time I ought to have been eating lunch on Google.)

Obviously, ghosts were right out. And schizophrenia seemed unlikely. But clearly _something_ was happening to Olivia. And Holmes wanted to come along. 

I scrubbed a hand over the soft bristles at the back of my head (getting a bit long, I'd need to see about a haircut) and sighed. I recalled Holmes's comment from the night before, her low, even voice echoing in my head.

_I can't tell you how often I've been rung up about ghosts and it's just old wiring._

Maybe she was an electrician. 

I texted Olivia back with an ETA for me and added, **Is it alright if my mate comes along? She's got some experience with this sort of thing.**

The whole thing felt like a lie: In the first place, Holmes and I weren't mates. In the second, 'some experience' made it sound like Holmes was a ghostbuster, which she had emphatically assured me she was _not_. Nevertheless, Olivia confirmed that was fine, I texted Holmes back with a time and address.

 **Fair warning** , I added, **I don't think we'll be seeing any ghosts tonight.**

The reply came at once, **Neither do I, it's why I'm so keen on coming. : )**

I found myself arriving at the cafe just as Holmes was. It was funny to see her out in the wild; at home she was usually wearing some variations on pajamas or leggings and long tops, but she was strolling down the street carrying a leather rucksack over one shoulder and looking very-put together in black jeans and a fawn-coloured jumper. Her close-cropped black hair was smoothed with product and she wasn't wearing any make-up so she looked entirely like herself. 

Before either I or she could say a word of greeting, Olivia appeared in the door of the cafe. She was pretty, short, and plump and for a second I felt a pang thinking it might have worked out if I wasn't such a fucking mess and she hadn't started going on about ghosts.

"Thanks so much, J - I was worried you wouldn't come, that you'd think I'm mental," she said, looking up at me with a nervous smile. Then, dark eyes flickering over to Holmes, she asked, "And this is your friend?"

"Yeah," I said, mercifully not having to answer for the fact that I'd been armchair diagnosing her with a serious mental illness for the better part of a day. "Holmes, this is Olivia, Olivia, this is my flatmate, Sherlock Holmes."

Olivia's eyebrows rose involuntarily and Holmes gave a sympathetic grimace and said, "I have been reliably informed that 'Sherlock' means 'fair-haired'; I was quite blonde as an infant. At any rate, I prefer Holmes."

"Liv's fine for me," Olivia replied with a nervous smile. "Ah, shall we just...go along? I'll admit, it all seems silly now, in the daylight."

Holmes smiled briefly; less a smile and more a twitch upward of her thin lips. "But it bothered you, didn't it? This thing you experienced? Or you wouldn't have left home with wet hair this morning."

Olivia touched the ends of her hair, self-consciously. Even I was thrown for a bit of a loop. Wet hair? How on earth could she have known that?

"Your clothes," Holmes nodded at Olivia's knee-length plaid dress and shiny brown Oxford heels. "Vintage. Or vintage-inspired, at the very least. I assume you ordinarily take care to style your hair accordingly, but though it retains its natural curl, they are falling rather loose and limp at present. Not unkempt, but untidy. I concluded you left your flat in a hurry." 

My mouth was hanging open as I tried to remember exactly what Olivia had looked like at the restaurant. Admittedly, her appearance was secondary in my memory to what she'd said, but I did remember her hair sitting higher above her shoulders, more fastidiously styled and curled. But only a bit. I hadn't noticed a difference at first and I was astonished that Holmes, who'd never seen her before, had picked up on it at once.

And she must have been on the right track because Olivia laughed nervously and nodded, confirming her supposition. "I didn't want to stay there after...after last night. We've...we've always got on, my ghost and I, only..."

"Why don't we go inside?" Holmes asked, nodding at the door of the cafe. "We can have a cup of something hot and you can tell me everything - starting with the first time you and your ghost became acquainted."

I felt like rather a third wheel in all this, but, ever the gentleman, I held the door for the pair of them and ordered a round of drinks as we crowded in round a little table at the back of the shop. Holmes thanked me, but didn't touch the cappuccino she'd asked for, instead staring at Olivia with her hands tucked under her chin and her black eyes piercing. It was a bit much and Olivia only swallowed rather than spoke, staring down at her cup, until I touched her hand softly and prompted her. 

"You said it was a woman who talked to you?" I asked quietly, like she was a patient I was trying to diagnose who was shy about details of their symptoms. "Sat on the edge of your bed?"

"Beside me," Olivia corrected me, looking up and speaking to me rather than Holmes. "I didn't see her, at first. Just, felt her. One night...three months ago, it must have been. Just here."

She touched her left side, finger tracing an arc from her ribs to her hips. 

"I was lying in bed, it was early, I could see the light coming through the curtains, but my alarm clock hadn't gone off. Then I felt this pressure of the bed dipping beside me. I used to have a dog when I was little who'd crawl into bed and - well, I was _very_ little then, the dog's been long gone, but I must've been tired still, or not quite awake because I thought it was the dog and I drifted back off."

"Do you remember," Holmes interrupted, "what position you were in when you felt the bed dip?"

"I was on my back," Olivia replied promptly. "I remember that because I could feel pressure all alongside me, on the left, not on my back at all."

"Hmm," Holmes made a considering sound, then a little 'go on' gesture.

"I think I drifted off because I woke up and had a sudden flash, remembering that I haven't had a dog since I was little and it couldn't have been...well." The apples of her cheeks flushed pink with embarrassment. "I didn't think much more about it, assumed I'd dreamt it. Then it happened again."

She repeated her story, with many of the same details: it was just dawn, she was awake, lying on her back, felt a pressure beside her in the bed as though someone or something was sitting against her. This time she was significantly more rattled.

"I'd heard," Olivia said, "on some...programme or other, years ago, that sometimes, if you've got a...presence or something, that if you just speak to them quite firmly, they'll leave you alone. So I said - I might have shouted, actually - 'Look, I don't want to see you, but you're welcome to stay if you leave me alone.'"

"Why did you tell the...spirit that it was welcome to stay?" Holmes asked, quirking one dark eyebrow. "If you were frightened."

"I wasn't frightened," Olivia replied. "Just...unnerved. I'd never had that sort of experience, though I was open to it. I've been to some seances and things, once a friend and I went to Lillydale, in New York. It was the centre of the Spiritualist movement in the 19th century. I mean, if she'd lived in the flat before me, well, it was her space as well as mine, wasn't it?"

Holmes didn't say anything, so I jumped in with a nod and a, "That makes sense. But you told me she spoke to you."

Olivia confirmed that she had. Not anything coherent at first. Muttering. Mumbling. But she started making tentative replies. And before long the two of them were holding full-blown conversations. Her ghost's name was Maud. She had in fact occupied the flat a century ago, but had been carried off by 'the influenza.' 

"When did these conversations occur?" Holmes asked. "While you were making supper? Watching television?"

"No," Olivia shook her head. "Only after I'd gone to bed. When the lights were off. In the dark."

"Did you feel the same pressure on the mattress?" Holmes asked. "As though she was sitting beside you."

"No," Olivia replied. "I haven't felt her sitting there. But it must be her, mustn't it? Unless there are two ghosts."

"I highly doubt that," Holmes replied with a wry smile. Alarmingly, she drained her lukewarm cappuccino in one go and stood, clapping her hands expectantly. "Well! Shall we go, then?"

"Wait," I said, holding up a hand for forestall her. "What was it that happened last night, Liv? That bothered you so much."

She went back to worrying her hands. Looking down at her lap Olivia said, "It all got a bit...scary. And it hadn't been like that. I wasn't scared when she sat beside me, or when she talked to me. But last night...she started telling me things. Warning me, I thought, but it turned into a threat. She said I had to leave the flat or something awful would happen. Then there was banging all around. On the ceiling, on the floor. I was so frightened, I wanted to spring out of bed, but I didn't dare. Just pulled the blankets over my head like a child. Eventually it went quiet. I...I saw my landlady on the way out, but she just greeted me cheerful as anything. She hadn't heard anything. I didn't ask, obviously."

"Obviously," Holmes replied. She'd remained standing throughout; I had the distinct impression that she was getting bored by all the talk. "Well, may we see the place? I am intensely curious about it."

"Have you brought...sage or something?" Olivia asked, glancing about as though Holmes might pull a magic wand out of her rucksack. "A smudge stick?"

"Nothing that requires an open flame," Holmes replied with another thin smile. "I'm trying to quit smoking, it helps not to carry a lighter on my person. Shall we?"

She gestured impatiently to the door. As she got up, Olivia caught my eye with a sort of, ' _You're sure she's alright?_ ' expression.

Honestly...no. I wasn't. I was as lost as Olivia was, despite knowing more details, nothing seemed to be any clearer to me now than it was the night before when Olivia claimed to have a gift for the supernatural. The only thing I was sure about was that something had happened to her and it scared her and she was looking for some reassurance. 

Dredging up a bit of the sympathy I thought I'd lost, I gave her what I hoped was a comforting smile and said, "It'll be fine," with far more confidence than I felt. It seemed to do the trick. She returned the smile, albeit wanly, and the two of us followed Holmes out the door.


	3. Supernatural

The sun was disappearing over the tops of the buildings and it was full dark by the time we reached her flat. It was located in a squat brick building, that had probably been a townhouse a hundred years ago - maybe when "Maud" was in occupancy - but it had been sliced up into apartments long ago. Still, it was a nice looking place, a throwback that hadn't been leveled during the Blitz. Some of the other properties in the neighbourhood hadn't fared so well, modern-looking buildings, shiny and new, soared over Olivia's flat, making it look small, scruffy and out of place. 

"My landlady lives on the ground floor," Olivia said as she quietly let us in through the small back garden. "I try not to be a bad tenant, so I tend to be quiet when I'm home. Erm. If you wouldn't mind just taking your shoes off..."

Holmes and I obliged. Olivia's flat, was small, but charming, with a tiny kitchen, built-in cupboards and rather a nice view of the street outside the window. I noted the books on her shelves, novels that ranged the gamut from Austen to Garden to Waters, interspersed with more academic titles, Radical Decadence: Excess in Contemporary Textiles and Craft and The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. There was a half-finished mock-up of a gown on a dress form and a length of cloth on a cutting table. 

"That's really nice," I said, referring to the half-completed intricate beadwork that Olivia was evidently hand-sewing. I vaguely remembered her saying something about working in fabric restoration. "Is that for your work?"

She shook her head, but smiled at the compliment. "No, but thanks - I'm trying to copy a detail from a gown in a painting. It's for YouTube, I've got...the tiniest ever following. But some people like to watch videos of hand-stitching and beading, it's meditative - "

She was cut off by a decidedly unmeditative _BEEEEEEEEEP_ from the kitchen that made us both jump out of our skins. We turned and saw Holmes removing a small white box from a vacant plug in the wall. 

"Sorry," she apologised, tucking the box back into her bag. "As you were." 

My heart was still pounding and I tried to catch Holmes's eye, hoping she would respond to my, 'What the hell?' facial expression, but Holmes didn't look at me, much less meet my eye. She was studying the baseboards. 

"YouTube, eh?" I decided to circle back round to making small talk with Olivia. "Did you...mention that last night?"

She smiled, and a very charming smile it was too. Privately, I cursed myself for making a hash of the evening - I was possibly being too hard on myself, but even if I wasn't game for a relationship, we might have had fun. She was bright, she was interesting - pet ghost aside. It might have been nice to have a little no-strings-attached affair. Someone warm and soft and lovely to wile away the hours with. Even if it only lasted a few weeks, then fizzled, it was better than what I currently had, which was nothing.

"I don't think so," she replied generously. "If I did, I don't recall - but it's a little blip on the radar. I've got a Patreon, but it doesn't pay the bills or anything. And what I make goes into buying fabric and notions. I like go thrifting and alter what's there to fit me, or better fit an era I'm dressing for, even if the clothes weren't made for that era. I show people how to make little alterations here and there, basic stitches, it's incredible how easy it is, sewing, I mean. But people are so intimidated by it."

I nodded; my sewing skills were not inconsiderable, but had mostly been practised on living flesh, not vintage attire. I decided against relating my most recent experience in that area - stitching up a little boy who took a hard fall through a glass-top table. Poor little fellow was raising hue, but he was brave as he could be for four. I gave him a sticker and a sweet for his troubles and that made him feel a bit better.

"How about you?" Olivia spoke up when I didn't do anything more than nod at her last. "Any...sidelines?"

"Nothing that pays," I said with a shrug. Was an army pension a sideline? Not hardly; I was being compensated without actually doing anything. Stitching up little kids and rewarding them with lollipops for being very brave whilst I patched them up. My mind drummed up the distant ringing of gunfire and smell of smoke and for a few seconds, I had the distinct sensation that I wasn't in London at all, not in a cozy little flat, but back in a medical tent, boiling in scrubs, trying to staunch the flow of blood from wounds that seemed determined to keep on bleeding, and when I breathed in I swore I could smell it, the blood, metallic and cloying at the back of my throat. 

I blinked my eyes and cleared my throat and breathed in, _hard_. Wood floor beneath me. Overhead light, dimmer than it ought to be, one bulb blown out. The room smelled floral due to a wall plug-in by Olivia's bed with a tiny undercurrent of fryer grease from the chippy down the street. 

Olivia's fingers on my arm anchored me further to the present and when I opened my eyes I looked down and saw only her worried face, not the vacant expression of a soldier going into shock. She was looking past me, toward the bed.

"What's...what's she doing, then?"

Whilst I'd been quietly going to pieces, Holmes had climbed onto the mattress, peering up at a vent in the ceiling with the aid of a small torch. 

"Anyone upstairs?" she asked, not removing her eyes from the ceiling. 

"No, not right now," Olivia replied. "There were some when I moved in a year ago, but they've gone. I don't think Mrs. B's listed the flat, she said something about making repairs."

"You've only lived here a year?" Holmes asked, hopping off the bed and making another circuit of the room, more quickly than before. Rather than looking down at the floor, she was peering up this time. There was an air of distraction about her, in the way she moved her hands, craned her neck, but she kept her head tilted toward us and seemed to be listening with intense concentration.

"Yes, a little longer," Olivia confirmed.

"How much longer?"

"Ah...four, yes, for months," she replied haltingly, then with greater conviction. "My position's grant-funded, I wasn't sure I'd be able to afford the rent much longer, but the funding was renewed so I've been able to stay on. I'm glad of that, I didn't fancy trying to find a flatmate, it's a dodgy prospect. This is... _was_ , really perfect."

"Mmm," Holmes hummed, snapping off the torch and putting it back in her bag. "You don't mind having the landlady just under you, then?"

"Oh, no," Olivia replied at once. "I prefer it, actually. Since I do like living on my own, I was looking for an owner-occupied property. That way I knew it'd have a better chance of being kept up. And I'm quiet, as well."

"Does she let you keep anything upstairs?" Holmes asked, looking up at the ceiling. "Storage? For an extra fee, perhaps?"

"I've never asked. I haven't got anything to store. And I think the upstairs is a bit of a mess; I've never been up there, there's been no need."

Holmes asked a few more questions: did the landlady have a job, how often was she in the house, did she ever have regular visitors. It wasn't too much longer before I had a pretty decent Idea of what track she was on to explain the haunting and Olivia caught on quickly as well.

"I'm sorry," she held up a hand, brow creasing incredulously. "You don't think - you _do_ think Mrs. B's got something to do with this? How? _Why?_ That doesn't make any sense."

"On, the contrary, I think it makes a great deal of sense," Holmes said, a corner of her mouth twisting down in unmistakable annoyance. "Your period of occupation was only meant to last a year, and your ghostly friend only began visiting after you extended your lease - but not immediately after. She had no objection to your remaining as her tenant indefinitely, but something changed since your lease was renewed and now it seems she - or someone with a vested interest in the property - would like to have you out."

Arms folded over her chest, Olivia adopted a defensive posture and mulish expression, which she turned on me, accusingly saying, "You said she had experience with this sort of thing! I asked you here to help me with a ghost, not accuse my landlady of wanting me out on the street! You _lied_ to me."

I opened my mouth to reply, though for the life of me, I wasn't sure what I was going to say in the fact of her irrational, but not unjust criticism, when Holmes answered for me. 

"Watson certainly did not _lie_ to you," she said, sounding incredibly offended on my behalf. "She said I had experience with this sort of thing, and I certainly do - finding rational explanations for inexplicable phenomena is something I _excel_ at, thank you very much. Now, if you prefer believing in your fantasy, that you can speak to the dead and you're being targeted by an unhappy poltergeist named Maud, you are welcome to your delusions, but I'll not have you wasting any more of mine or Watson's time. 

"However, _if_ ," she continued, with a steely glint in her eyes, "you'd like to get to the bottom of your _actual_ problem, then I am happy to be of assistance. The choice is yours, but make it quickly because if we are going to act, we are going to act immediately." 

I saw colour rise in Olivia's cheeks - either furious with the pair of us, or embarrassed with herself, I couldn't tell, until she lowered her eyes to the floor and muttered, "What do you want me to do, then?"

The annoyed little twist vanished and Holmes smiled at her with the air of a teacher who'd gotten a very dense student to work through a tedious, but ultimately simple maths exercise. 

"You are going to do nothing out of the ordinary," Holmes said. "Conduct yourself as you would any other Friday evening. Make yourself some tea, watch telly, continue your sewing, then take yourself to bed at your usual hour. Watson and I will remain here - upstairs - and proceed from there. I can assure you, you will be in absolutely no danger. Either natural or supernatural."

It was strange. When I told Holmes she could come along, I had no notion that she'd turn herself into a private investigator, nor that she'd speak so authoritatively - even commandingly about what was going on and what was to be done about it. Her confidence and self-assurance bordered on the ridiculous. And yet I found myself nodding along when she said we'd sequester ourselves upstairs and...do something or other. Holmes's confidence was catching. Or, at least, her ridiculousness was. And not just for me.

Olivia agreed to this vague scheme, albeit, reluctantly. She showed us out to the back landing, pointing to the flight of stairs leading to the second floor rooms. "The door will be locked - "

"Inconsequential," Holmes said, waving a hand around dismissively. "Come along, Watson. I hope your mobile is fully charged, we might have quite a long wait before us."

I looked down at the screen: 84%. Enough to tide me over for a few hours. 

Nervously, Olivia's eyes flicked up to mine. I thought she was about to apologise, but she seemed to lose her nerve at the last minute, shutting the door with a quiet click - and sliding the bolt into place. 

Holmes clapped a hand to my shoulder briefly and inclined her head to whisper in my ear, "I wouldn't take it too much to heart; she's altogether too flighty and fanciful for you, I think. Not well-suited at all; whoever it was that thought you ought to go out together would do well to reconsider their skills as a matchmaker."

I brought a hand to my mouth to stifle a snort; honestly, I wasn't looking to talk philosophy with her, just get off. But Holmes's perspective made me smile, anyway, and not much had been able to get a smile out of me these months and I was grateful. So grateful I nearly forgot that we had some kind of odd pseudo-ghost hunting to get to until Holmes squeezed my uninjured shoulder and nodded back at the house, indicating that we should return.


	4. Unraveling

We replaced our shoes and made our way down the stairs into the garden. Holmes flicked off the stairwell light as we left and bade me crouch down, taking our shoes back off on the rough stone steps leading away from the back door. Then, quiet as church mice, she and I tip-toed up the stairwell, and onto the second storey landing. From within her rucksack, Holmes removed a series of thin metal bars on a ring - lock picks, I realised with a jolt of surprise in my gut. Why would she carry lock picks the way others carried spare keys?

But I understood we were meant to be silent and held my tongue. At least until we were in the third suite of rooms. The set-up was similar to Olivia's downstairs flat, but the paint was chipping on the walls, the appliances older than Olivia's by at least a decade. Holmes took the flashlight out of her rucksack once again and its bright white light shone on the floor, the cupboards, the walls. It was empty; just as uninhabited as it was said to be.

Holmes crooked her finger and bade me follow her silently into the bathroom. She shut the door and clambered into the empty bathtub, long legs dangling over the side in a way that looked incredibly uncomfortable. Still, she seemed at ease and gestured grandly for me to take a seat upon the closed toilet, like it was a position of honour. I found myself snorting out a chuckle again and tried to rein it in.

"This'll be the most well-insulated room in the house, in terms of dampening noise," Holmes said, speaking at an ordinary volume. "I hardly think we've got to worry about discovery for a few hours yet, but even so, we can talk in here. I think you've got some questions for me, anyway?"

That was an understatement if ever I'd heard one.

"What do you _do_?" I blurted out, unwilling to hedge and unable to contain myself. "This..."

I was at a loss for words. From the make-up, to the lock picks, to her air of absolute authority in ordering Olivia to let two near-strangers enact what was essentially a stakeout in a building she did not own, it was all a big tangled knotty question that I wanted answered. Possibly more pressing, of course, was the question of why I was letting myself be drawn into going along with it, but that I could answer myself: Because I was bored. And, not to shy away too terribly from the truth about myself and how pathetic I'd become: Because I was lonely.

Holmes smiled, putting her hands behind her head to cushion the back of her skull from pressing into the tiles, looking for all the world as cheerful and comfortable as though she was splayed out on a chaise longue and not scrunched uncomfortably in a bathtub. 

"I'm a detective - well," she scrunched up her face in an unreadable expression and amended, "a _consulting_ detective. Brought in by the official police to give little hints and insights into matters which are a trifle esoteric or whose solutions have eluded them. It's...spotty work, under the best of circumstances. Interesting, though - well."

Again, she wrinkled her nose and her mouth curved down in a frown which wrinkled her chin; it was a comical expression which made her look like a toddler who'd been offered a plate of broccoli.

"It can be interesting," she tempered her previous statement with a slight sigh. "I don't often get out and about in the field, I've mostly been confined to cold cases - or lukewarm cases, when the Met has exhausted all other options - more a research librarian than a proper detective. Little things like _this_ , though, this is much more exciting than my usual milieu."

"Sitting in a bathtub is more exciting than looking at cold cases?" I asked, unable to keep the incredulity out of my voice. Something in my tone or expression evidently struck Holmes as very funny for she laughed, and loudly too; her confidence in the sound-dampening effects of mid-century plumbing as firm as her confidence in herself as an investigator. She had a really wonderful laugh; in contrast to her deep, even voice and crisp accent, her laughter was full-throated and, as I mentioned, _loud_. 

"I can assure you that it is," she grinned. "Especially when I've got good company and good conversation."

Then it was my turn to laugh; _this_ sitting around was interesting and _I_ was a good conversationalist?

"Your standards aren't particularly high on either count, then?" I asked, wondering if I'd get her laughing again.

On the contrary, her face went still and a distinct line appeared between her eyebrows in the gloom. Didn't look nearly as charming as the contemplative scrunch, or the laughter. 

"Quite the opposite, I assure you," she said, very seriously. "Now, admittedly, I did not harbour high _hopes_ in your conversation - I assumed areas of mutual interest would be few and thus we would have little to talk about. I don't go in for sport, my scientific interests are chemical rather than anatomical, and I'm afraid my patriotic vigour is nothing to yours."

"You sound like my ex," I muttered, looking instinctively down at my mobile. Several unanswered texts sat in my messages from Mary all some flavour of, 'Heard you got shot, are you alright?' 'Need anything?' 'Ananya said you're playing with the club again, glad to hear it! Send me your schedule of games, if I'm free, I'll come down!' I read them. I didn't delete them, which meant I could tell myself I was going to get round to replying sometime. But I hadn't so far and tonight certainly wasn't the time to chat up and old flame. 

"Oh." Holmes made a surprised little sound at that, dark eyebrows lifting in another expression I couldn't read. She had quite an emotive face when it wasn't slathered in contouring cream. "Well. Erm. Interesting. Anyway. But... _anyway_ , your assessment of Olivia's mental state made me re-evaluate my initial impression of you."

Now it was time for my eyebrows to shoot upwards. "What? The fact that I recklessly - and incorrectly, mind - diagnosed her with schizophrenia?"

Holmes snapped her fingers and pointed at me like I'd said something clever. "No! Well, yes - more the fact that you realised your error, though I will admit to being intrigued by your more than passing familiarity in abnormal psychology."

"Oh, well, _that_ ," I replied with a rueful smile. "That's a longstanding preoccupation. I think I still owe back fees at my village library for keeping the psychology books out too long. Lucky for any potential patients that I realised I'd be a better surgeon than a therapist. Still, I knew it couldn't really be a _ghost_. How d'you know it's the landlady, then?"

"I don't _know_ ," Holmes said, an echo of her comments the night previous. "But I have crafted a fairly compelling sequence of events, convincing enough that Liv was willing to cast aside her comfortable delusions to test it out. There are air circulation vents in the floor and ceilings of the house, easy enough to utilise to mimic a ghostly voice. As for the banging and carrying on, the walls in this building are paper-thin, this room being an exception. And did you notice the state of the floors in this apartment?"

"No?" I replied. "Was there something I ought to have seen?"

"Dust," Holmes replied immediately. "Or, rather, the lack thereof - there is quite an accumulation upon the windowsills, countertops, and in the corners of the room, but none in the centre of the floors, where it appears they have been recently trodden on or else had various objects dragged across their surface."

"Liv said the landlady was having work done," I pointed out.

"Techincally, she said the landlady _mentioned_ there _might_ be work done at some amorphous future time," Holmes corrected. "But that it had not yet begun. So, someone's been up here - I'd surmise, a woman, given the fact that Olivia mentioned the voice she heard was female and identified itself as Maud. Possibly - " here she smiled an impish little smile " - a drama student, though that is my own little conjecture and based, admittedly, in my own fancy. It was the detail of the influenza that stuck with me. An elaboration which a common person, hired to make a bit of noise, would not latch onto, but which a drama student, steeped in a knowledge of Uta Hagen's Nine Questions, could not resist."

Pushing back on these suppositions was pointless. I'd bought into it, already, hadn't I? Or else I wouldn't have been sitting on a toilet across from my flatmate folded in half in a bathtub talking about unmasking a deceitful ghost like we were extras from _Scooby-Do_. And yet...

"...it just seems like a lot of fuss," I remarked. "Why not just ask her to move out?"

"Because the landlady, clearly thought that request would be turned down," Holmes replied. "And she could hardly evict her tenant who, by all accounts, is a model occupant. Clearly Mrs. B thought so because she renewed her lease. However, if, as I suspect, given the age of this property in comparison to its neighbours, she's had an offer to purchase the property which she desperately wants to take. Thus the renewal is the fly in the ointment; she must honour Olivia's lease agreement and permit her to remain in residence until her tenancy terminates in eight months. Likely the investors are not willing to wait so long and she wants to force her out before then. It would be more convenient for Mrs. B to have _Olivia_ break her lease in order to move out so that the deal can go through."

That did make sense - but for the fact that hiring a drama student to wail through the vents pretending to be a ghost was absolutely _mental_. Which, naturally, I mentioned to Holmes. She had an answer for that too.

"I agree, it's a little...complicated," she accepted. "But I assume that Mrs. B was well aware of Olivia's belief in forces beyond our mortal ken. I mean, _you_ learned of them over the course of one dinner. Imagine what little fancies Mrs. B has learned of over the course of sixteen months' acquaintance. And when she heard her shouting at the spirits to leave her be - thin walls, remember - no doubt the idea struck her that if she could not legally force her out, she might _frighten_ her out."

"But what about that first time - the first two times Olivia said she felt something in the bed with her," I pointed out. "The landlady might have wanted to sell, but wouldn't have known about the ghost thing _then_."

"True," Holmes nodded vigorously. "Entirely true and a very salient point - however, I don't believe one has a direct bearing on the other, excepting the fact that those first experiences informed Olivia's decision to shout about ghosts in her flat. The first two instances happened near dawn, the latter two much earlier at night, shortly after she'd gone to bed and turned the lights off. I saw a prescription bottle for an acid reflux medication in her kitchen and she mentioned both times she felt the presence beside her, she had been asleep on her back; both are commonly thought to contribute to the phenomenon of sleep paralysis." 

Laid out so baldly, all the pieces fit together so naturally, that it seemed an entirely correct assessment. 

"Wow," I said; Holmes wasn't the only one who dabbled in understatement. "That's...extraordinary."

Holmes smiled and shrugged, an affectation of bashfulness, but I could tell she was pleased by the compliment. Then she cocked her head toward the door, listening. Holding up a long, thin finger, she beckoned me incline my head closer and, lowering her voice to a whisper, said, "We'll see how closely I've come to the truth. Quietly now; I think I hear someone on the stairs."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The assessment of the cause of sleep paralysis is taken directly from my own experiences; most people have them at the beginning of their sleep cycle, I have them between 5 and 6am because I like to be different. (I've also had the sensation of someone crawling into bed with me, it's incredibly freaky.)


	5. Discovery

I didn't hear the sound of the door opening, but Holmes did and hauled herself out of the bath to crouch beside the door, again crooking a finger toward me so that I could follow. I did - wincing when my knee popped in the descent, but Holmes didn't appear too put out; she had her ear by the crack in the door, her right eye peering through the keyhole. Despite my distance from the door, I could hear shuffling, then a series of loud thuds. As though someone was stomping around in a pair of heavy-soled boots. 

The thuds became louder and quicker, then there was a clanking and rattling. I started when Holmes reached back and lay her hands (freezing cold her fingers were), on the back of my neck to guide my eyes toward the keyhole. 

"Look," she whispered, her breath hot against my ear. I turned my eye to the keyhole and peered into the room beyond.

Within the gloom of the room I made out the figure of a young woman stomping about for all she was worth, dragging heavy chains around in the worst cliche of a haunting anyone could imagine. It was like watching one of those old 'How They Did It' about sound effects artists in radio programmes. All that was missing was a pair of coconuts to mimic a ghost horse and complete the scene. 

Holmes released me and clapped her hands over her ears. I didn't even have time to question it before the most ungodly shrieking filled the air. It sounded for all the world like someone was being murdered in the next room - so much for the Nine Questions, someone who was suffering from the flu did _not_ sound like that.

It cut off; had to take a bit of preparation to scream that loudly for that long and in the silence that followed, Holmes got to her feet and wrenched the door open. I followed her out into the room, not exactly sure what her plan was, but assuming she must have had _some_ idea what she was about.

That turned out to be a premature evaluation. Holmes flicked her torch on, shining it in the girl's shocked face, prompting another scream. This time, rather than being calculated to terrify, it was entirely the result of being startled, but it was no less piercing for all that. The would-be ghost instinctively grabbed the nearest thing to her - an electric kettle, ancient and rusting - and hurled it at Holmes's head. 

My body responded before my mind caught up. One second I was standing slightly behind her, the next I'd reached out and plucked the kettle from its flight, hugging it to my chest like it was a very oddly shaped, very hard ruby ball. I dropped it, feeling the scrape of rust down my forearm, distantly grateful that I'd gotten stayed up to date with my tetanus jabs. I kept the ghost-girl in my line of sight, but there wasn't anything else to grab; she'd dropped the chains when Holmes first shone a light on her face and they were crumpled in a heap at her feet. She did not seem inclined to throw anything, but she put her hands up over her head and shouted.

"AUNTIE! AUNTIE! IT'S THE POLICE!"

I must have pulled a face, because Holmes looked sharply at me and deliberately stepped on the toe of my shoe with the heel of hers. I interpreted a minute shake of her head to mean that she'd rather I not disillusion this girl about our identities. 

Holmes for her part, said nothing, just kept her torch trained on the young woman's face, her own expression neutral, but in the manner of a school teacher who'd caught the class getting up to mischief after she stepped out of the room. I tried to match it, but I've been informed that my 'firm, but disappointed' face just made me look cross. 

Another sound of footsteps on the stairs - a woman who appeared to be in her early sixties, with bottle-red hair, appeared brandishing a broomstick. Olivia wasn't long to follow, in striped pyjamas, mobile in hand, poised as if to make a call.

The red-haired woman (presumably Mrs. B), rounded on Olivia in astonishment.

"You called the _police_?" she asked, looking stricken. The broom fell from her bloodless fingers and she looked between Holmes and myself nervously. "I - I...you've got this the wrong way round. We're only...it's just...just some harmless fun."

"Harmless fun?" Holmes asked severely, shining the light of her torch in Mrs. B's face, causing her to squint and look away. My disapproving mask slipped a bit; I had the sense Holmes was enjoying every second of playing copper and honestly, it was a _bit_ funny to see the landlady going all to pieces after the shite she was trying to get away with. "Trying to frighten your tenant out of residency is your idea of _fun_?"

"OhmyGod," the girl - the niece - said, covering her face with her hands. "You said there wouldn't be a fuss! You said this would be the end of it! I could lose my place at school, Auntie, and I'm meant to be in _Twelfth Night_ \- " 

"Shh!" Mrs. B hushed her. "Be quiet, Sophie! I'm sure...I'm sure if the officers will just...I mean, all I wanted. I haven't caused any harm, as you see, Olivia is perfectly well - "

"Well?" Olivia interjected shrilly. She folded her arms over her chest and looked defeated. "You've...but this is ridiculous! You had this girl pretend to be a ghost to scare me out of the flat? What for?"

It all came out nearly as Holmes predicted it would, with one essential alteration: Mrs. B had _already_ sold the property to the interested developers. She'd lied about her tenant's length of occupancy, so convinced was she that she'd manage to have her out before they wanted the building emptied. The deadline was at the end of the month. 

Olivia looked completely crestfallen. "I've got three weeks to find another place?" she asked incredulously. 

"No," Holmes shook her head. "I'm no expert on tenancy laws, but if the new owners have no intention of honouring your lease, then they must evict you. As you are a model tenant by your own admission - and your landlady must think so too, otherwise she would not have resorted to such dramatic means to prompt you to quit the place, that will take some time. And the process will no doubt be prolonged due to the fact that intimidation techniques were used to oust you from your home. In the meanwhile, you may stay on here until your lease terminates naturally or you find other lodgings."

Mrs. B was wringing her hands, looking absolutely wretched. I couldn't bring myself to feel sorry for her, exactly, but it was a fairly pathetic sight. Her eyes welled up and she turned toward Olivia with her hands clasped, as though she was praying.

"I really am so very sorry," she said, voice breaking on the apology. "I only...it's a big house to keep up by myself. And they...they offered me...quite a lot of money, only the thing needed to be done _immediately_."

Olivia turned away and shook her head. "I can't believe this. Of all the - and I _fell_ for it, that's the worst of all. I feel so _stupid_."

"Don't be too hard on yourself," Holmes said, inclining her head toward me. "You did seek outside help. Though for a different problem than the one you actually had."

"Oh, God, J," Olivia covered her mouth with her hand. "I can't believe I said - I'm sorry I said those things to you earlier. It was awful of me."

"Don't worry about it," I said, forgiving her easily, having half-forgotten the insult already. "You were under a lot of stress. Are you comfortable staying on here or do you want to stay with us tonight?"

Olivia said that although she was _not_ comfortably staying at the flat for the rest of the night, despite Mrs. B's protests that she would be fine, that she _never_ meant any harm, and that she was _so_ sorry it had to come out like this. Not feeling particularly generously disposed toward the landlady, I couldn't help feeling she wasn't sorry she'd caused her tenant so much distress; she was only sorry she'd been caught.

Holmes and I lingered long enough for Olivia to call her friend in the neighbourhood and confirming that she would be staying the night on her sofa. She put together a suitcase with toiletries and clothes for the next day and we offered to walked her to her friend's flat a few blocks away. 

As we shut the door behind us, I heard the echo of the niece's voice on the stairwell, "Wait. Were they _not_ the police, then?"

Olivia apologised profusely the entire walk over. I wasn't sorry to be rid of her when all was said and done, though I didn't wish her ill. It was as Holmes said, a bit too fanciful, a bit too flighty; it wouldn't have worked out long or short-term. 

The two of us caught a late bus back to Baker St. To my great surprise, Holmes turned toward me after we'd sat, eyes shining with excitement. It was a stark contrast to the cool, calm, pseudo-constable she'd been playing at in the flat.

"That was _amazing,_ " she said earnestly.

"It was a bit mad," I laughed ruefully. "Still, seems like Mrs. B'll get her way in the end, I can't see Olivia sticking around 'til her lease is expired, can you?"

"No, no," she fluttered her hands dismissively, still staring at me. " _You_ were amazing. The kettle, I mean! Just...you just _plucked_ it right out of the air."

For a second, I thought she was having me on. That she was being sarcastic (being Scottish, I'm fluent in sarcasm in three dialects). But no, she seemed completely convinced that I'd done something marvelous, though she herself had just woven together a thread of real estate purchases gone sour out of a half-cocked ghost story, a few floor vents, and some displaced dust.

"Ah..." I cleared my throat awkwardly, not used to being on the receiving end of such genuine (and rather overstated) praise. "Well, you might have ducked."

"Oh, no, it was definitely going to hit me in the face," Holmes said firmly. "It's incredible you've got such quick reflexes, given the fact that you were in traction a year ago."

"I'm a good patient," I said simply. And I was. Or, to be totally honest, I was a rotten invalid. I couldn't take being still, ever since I was little, and I didn't like feeling and being told that I _couldn't_ do something. "And I was lucky. I've got nearly the full range of motion in the shoulder back. The knee nearly gave us away though."

"The knee is an older injury?" Holmes asked, brow furrowed, hands hovering over my leg as though she wanted to prod at it, but was keeping herself in check through great force of will. "Or was it exacerbated by the...accident?"

The careful phrasing was sweet, but unnecessary. A bomb was dropped on the hospital. I lived. Remarkably intact, all things considered. Lots of other people either hadn't survived or hadn't come out nearly as well as I had. I knew, intellectually, I ought to be grateful and thanking my lucky stars. It was just hard to get my gut and my heart to agree to that. 

"Tore my ACL in uni," I nodded. "Then again when I fell. Could've been worse."

"Mmm," Holmes hummed, eyes looking me over like I was being given an x-ray. She licked her lips and I could practically feel the weight of unasked questions hanging between us, but I wasn't inclined to talk about myself much more. I'd told her all the important things when Rachel Stamford introduced us. 

_'Do you...have a particular medical regimen you follow?'_ Holmes asked, delicately. Very delicately. _'For pain-management?'_

 _'Nothing stronger than ibuprofen or paracetamol,'_ I told her. I'd been given opioids in hospital and they'd played bloody havoc with my stomach, among other things. Once the pain was down to a tolerable level, with healing and physical therapy, I never filled any of my scripts after I'd been discharged; I wasn't one of those unlucky sods who experienced euphoria, they only exchanged one form of physical agony for another with me.

She seemed surprised, but relieved; it wasn't an unfair question, exactly. Now I thought I had a clearer picture; working with the police had to place her closer to opioid addiction than most. Fentanyl deaths were on the rise; it was why I tried to carry Naloxone on me and we always had a supply on hand at the surgery. Just in case of an overdose situation. 

"I'm fine," I said to her, when she wouldn't stop staring. "Really. Pain's under control, for the most part."

"Glad to hear it," Holmes said with a genuine smile. Then busied herself fiddling with her Apple watch and we rode the rest of the way in silence. 

My mobile buzzed with an incoming text as we got off at our stop. It was from Olivia.

**Thanks so much for helping me. I still can't believe it. But I do want to thank you - and your friend. Be well.**

I smiled and paused long enough to write back, **You too. : )**

"Olivia?" Holmes guess correctly. "Trying to ask you out for a do-over?"

I laughed and shook my head, "No, I think that ship has sailed. You were right, we weren't suited. She just wanted to thank us. Nice girl, really, just a bit..."

I trailed off before I said something rude or unkind. Holmes flashed me another smile.

"You're a very good sort of person, aren't you, Watson?" she asked, surveying me with another x-ray kind of look. It wasn't phrased like a compliment, more an assessment. Still, the assertion, whatever it was, made me uncomfortable.

"Not really." I shifted my shoulders awkwardly. "Not moreso than anyone else."

"That is patently untrue," Holmes said. "I highly doubt 'anyone else' would have gone to the aid of a near stranger - someone they met once and didn't particularly care for after that first meeting - just because they _asked_."

"Well, I nearly didn't," I said, remembering my instinctively negative reaction upon receiving the text...what, ten hours ago? It felt like it had been ages, but it wasn't even midnight yet. Incredible, only a little more than twenty-four hours ago Holmes had been giving herself Kylie Jenner lips and listening to me whinge about my romantic life. 

"Nearly-didn't doesn't matter," Holmes said resolutely, pulling her rucksack off her shoulders. "You _did_ and - oh, damn it."

The bag overturned, spilling its contents onto the sidewalk. I crouched down and helped Holmes put it all back - the torch she'd been carrying around, a mobile which survived the drop intact, a carbon monoxide detector (that was the thing that beeped earlier when Holmes plugged it into the wall), a moleskin notebook, a few pens, receipts, other bits of detritus and a familiar-looking cardboard box. Two doses of Naloxone nasal spray. Exactly the sort we had at the surgery. 

For a second, I was awash in indignation - I'd _told_ her I didn't use opioids and she carried Naloxone? But I caught myself before I reacted. Remembered her work with the Met. It was possible she'd found herself working as a first responder in some capacity. And even if she carried it because she was concerned about me, it was actually rather thoughtful. There were plenty of people who would leave someone at risk for overdose to their own devices. Turn a blind eye or assume it was none of their business. 

"Good stuff, that," I remarked as she buried the Naloxone at the bottom of her bag. "I always try to have some, about, just in case. It can be a lifesaver - literally."

Holmes didn't meet my eyes as she stood, keys in hand, to open the door to 221b. "Yes. A lifesaver. Too right."

Once we were back in the flat, she made a beeline for her bedroom, pausing on the threshold to look at me over her shoulder. "Ah, good-night, then, Watson. Thank you for...indulging me, this evening."

I furrowed my brow and frowned at her. "No need to that me, it was you who - " 

"Nevertheless," she interrupted me. "It was...a more than satisfactory diversion. So. Thanks again. Good-night."

"Good - " but I didn't get the chance to finish before she shut her bedroom door with a quiet click. "Night."

I didn't go to bed - we neither of us had supper so I threw together a quick meal of pre-cooked rice and bagged curried veg. There was enough for two, but Holmes didn't come out of her bedroom for the rest of the night. I put the leftovers in the fridge with a note on top, ' _Yours if you want it - JW_ ' 

She must have come out eventually. Though the kitchen and sitting room were empty and her bedroom door closed, the note was stuck to the front of the fridge and the plastic container it had been in was resting in the drying rack by the sink. She'd drawn over the top of the note with a smilie face, and in tiny cramped letters at the bottom wrote _'Thanks - SH'_

It was a quiet day at the surgery, the staff chatted a bit about their weekend plans. I didn't have any and kept my mouth shut about what Holmes and I had got up to the night before. In the cold light of day, it still seemed all a bit too fantastical to be believed and anyway, I wasn't in a sharing mood. An odd reaction, but it felt...nice to have something between us. Something private, like an inside joke. A connection to another person that went beyond the business or the personal, but was a bit of both. 

If pressed that day, I would have thought that would be the end of it. One weird, wild night to reflect on sometimes, when life was so quiet and routine and dull I wanted to claw my skin off and remember that sometimes, the world could be a mad and fascinating place. Little did I know it was only the beginning; a slightly out of the ordinary footnote in a series of adventures to come. And it properly got started when my shift ended and I found I had a text from Holmes.

**I think I just met a girl who has been catfished by her step-father (!!!) En route to an internet cafe which might clear the matter up. If you'd like to join me, I'll buy you a latte since you were so kind as to provide me with a late supper.**

I made up my mind before I finished reading the text. For the first time in a year, I took action without mulling the thing over.

**Let me know the address, and I'll be there quick as I can.**


End file.
